Vibe Coding Inspiration

I had a conversation with a technology enthusiast in the early fall of 2025. This is a person whose opinion I respect and whose advice I usually heed. He and I struck up a conversation about Vibe Coding; a topic that I have heard of, but must admit that I have not dug too deeply into. He described how Vibe Coding is positioned to revolutionize the way organizations develop applications — noting the potential for a significant decrease in the delivery time of production-quality code. Through conversation, he mentioned Gene Kim and Steve Yegge’s new book, “Vibe Coding.” This was the beginning of a multi-hour and quite exhilarating experience.

The focus of Kim and Yegge’s book is to write production-quality code using Artificial Intelligence (AI) — specifically, agentic coding. As a curious technologist, simply reading about vibe coding isn’t enough. I have to get my hands dirty. Production-quality code isn’t a hard requirement for a playground, but code has to be good and secure enough to actually function and serve the purpose it was designed for. I decided it was time to dig in and see how far I could go.

Vibe Coding In Practice

Back in the day, I used to have multiple client websites in production for businesses and organizations around the Armstrong and Indiana County areas. Creating websites and web-based elements is something I have always enjoyed. It made sense for me to start another website, but perhaps one of my own.

It has been over a decade since I designed a website for a client. While traditional hosting services like GoDaddy are still available, I wanted something that I had more control over. I turned to Amazon Web Services to see how far I could push their free-tier (or very low-cost) services. Within a few minutes, I found I could build a WordPress website using AWS Lightsail for a relatively low cost. I decided to move forward following this path.

Within 30 minutes, I had a basic WordPress website working with the default template. I looked through the free templates, but didn’t find any that “were me.” This is when the lightbulb went off. I will create a custom WordPress template using vibe coding methods. This idea started small, but quickly morphed into a project that would consume hours of my time.

Ninja AI

I started with Ninja AI (Ninja). While this isn’t agentic coding, it is a form of vibe coding. I am impressed with Ninja’s ability to produce code. Ninja created every file needed for the template. We are talking about multiple PHP files and an impressive style sheet. Through a conversation with Ninja, it provided me with instructions on how to put all the files together and where to upload them. Within an hour, I had a semi-working WordPress template.

As I started to explore the code and test the template on the site, I encountered a number of bugs that needed fixing and tweaks I wanted to make. Over the next few days, I worked with Ninja in my free time. Together, we made multiple enhancements and fixed almost all of the bugs. Unfortunately, there was one bug that Ninja and I couldn’t figure out.

When a website visitor hovers over a main menu item and a sub menu is presented, Ninja couldn’t get the menu to remain visible so the visitor could click the links. The sub menu was blinking, or perhaps flickering, when the cursor rolled over the links within the sub menu. This caused the sub menu to close. After trying several approaches to get Ninja to resolve the issue, I decided it was time to change my tools.

A note from the author: One of the coolest features of Ninja is the ability to upload screenshots. Ninja has the ability to analyze screenshots to help troubleshoot and understand things better. I uploaded screenshots for two use cases: 1.) To present Ninja with more context of the sub menu issue and 2.) to analyze existing web elements to improve its coding abilities for my project. I was very impressed with this feature.

Claude Code

It was time to test drive an AI that I have been hearing a lot about, Claude. Claude comes in various forms. You can chat with Claude like I was doing with Ninja; there is also Claude Code, which has some enhanced abilities. I started with a new chat within Claude. I fed Claude all of the files that Ninja created for me and went to work. Claude corrected a number of bugs that Ninja didn’t find, but it could not correct the submenu problem — at least not with the chat conversation.

I moved into Claude Code, but I decided to kick it up a notch. I created a new (private) GitHub repository and moved all the code produced by Ninja into the repository. I asked Claude Code if it could manage the code through my repository. Sure enough, within five minutes, Claude Code was integrated with my GitHub repository. Awesome! But I couldn’t let the fun end there.

I asked Claude Code to create a GitHub Action to take a backup of any modified files within my production website instance and then automatically upload the updated code base into production. This worked flawlessly. I now have a pipeline built between Claude Code and my production website so I can automatically publish changes to my website, without needing to manually upload files using an sftp client. With as many commits I made, this simple pipeline and Git Action literally saved me hours of work. 

A note from the author: I do not advise that you create a pipeline that directly pushes to production. What you should do is create a pipeline that pushes to some sort of test or locked down environment so you can test the changes before pushing to production. In my case, Level509.com is my playground and test environment. Apparently, I test in prod?

Okay, playtime is over. It was time to get back to solving this pesky submenu problem. Claude Code and I got to work. After about an hour’s worth of effort, I wasn’t having too much luck — I was stuck with a broken submenu. Then, I remembered a lesson taught by Kim and Yegge in “Vibe Coding”: change the approach. I asked Claude Code to update the entire theme of the template. Change the colors, logos, etc. Claude was happy to oblige.

Claude Code got to work. It started making code changes and styling changes. I eagerly watched the output window as Claude was working. Within a few minutes, Claude made several changes, uploaded the changes to GitHub, and pushed the changes to my production website. The finished product was exactly what I asked for. The colors, the style, everything was on point. Best of all, the submenu issue was fixed!

Reflection

While I’ve used AI to generate a few simple scripts in the past, this is my first experience with a more challenging project, and I’m quite impressed! Learning the intricacies of tools like GitHub was an added bonus. I also used Jira to track bugs and feature requests throughout the process.

This entire experience was inspiring. I have so many ideas for products and apps that would be helpful to the world. Is vibe coding a way for me to start to make these ideas come to life? Maybe. While my first experience with vibe coding was fruitful, Kim and Yegge’s book “Vibe Coding” reveals multiple areas of concern and things to keep an eye on when building larger projects, especially in an enterprise environment. 

My mind is running wild with the potential of Vibe Coding, and I cannot wait to see how much AI coding matures in the months and years to come. For now, I recommend that you read Kim and Yegge’s book, “Vibe Coding,” and start to get your hands a little dirty like I did. This technology has already changed the course of technology. It possesses the potential to become ultra-powerful and perhaps, ultra-dangerous. 

Sources

• Kim, G., & Yegge, S. (2025). Vibe Coding: Building production-grade software with GenAI, chat, agents, and beyond. IT Revolution. 

Music Inspiration

The following album provided the vibes and energy to write this block post. This is one of my favorite albums right now.